As much as you may think that Google hates Apple’s guts and vice versa, well that is true, but Google does see Apple as an innovator. Maybe not as of what they are doing right now. Google’s having their Big Tent event in India, where Schmidt briefly assessed his competitors in a Q&A session. Schmidt said “I’m a Blackberry user, because I like the keyboard,” but he did acknowledge that Blackberry (RIM) was “slowly in trouble.” Schmidt went on to say that he’d pick up a Blackberry over a Kindle anyday, but did admit that Amazon is in much better shape than Blackberry is right now. Schmidt also explained that Amazon is an important Google partner and he also thinks of Amazon as a Google competitor as well.

When it came to questions about his fruity competitor – Apple – his tone was a bit more cautious. We all know that Apple is currently Google’s largest competitor. “Apple will continue to be a tremendous technology innovator and build beautiful products, regardless of the market share of the products, and that’s a great strength – they will continue to be the innovator.” That sounds a lot different than what Steve Jobs would have said about Android, especially since he wanted to declare nuclear warfare on Android.

Schmidt was also asked about the iPad and iPad Mini, he said that he preferred the iPad and that the Mini was too small. He then asked the host to consider Android. “Frankly, if you take a look at the Samsung 10-inch tablet, called the Nexus 10? More apps, more scalable and more secure.” Nothing like selling your own products while being asked about your competitors products.

Saying that the Nexus 10 has more apps, isn’t all that true,or a helpful metric. Google had 700,000 apps as of last October while Apple having more than 700,000. Most of the apps on Android are sorta tablet compatible, but not really. Even though there are technically more apps for the Nexus 10 than the iPad which has 300,000 optimized apps, Google has had a lot of trouble getting tablet-optimized apps. Often they are just scaled up versions of the phone app.

Schmidt was also asked about Google reader. He said that he does love Google Reader. The host followed up by asking then why are you killing it? “Priorities”

So what do you think of Eric Schmidt’s thoughts about Blackberry and Apple? Let us know in the comments down below.